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wili

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #200 on: February 04, 2016, 07:56:19 PM »
I guess I'm not following the qvetch here, ATeam...a couple locations didn't get quite the rain that we would have usually expected in an El Nino year, so it's ok for people to through out the entire science of climate change?? Aren't all El Nino's a bit different? Shouldn't we expect all 'normal' patterns to act more and more abnormally (and in more and more unpredictable ways) as GW screws up everything? Your rant is sounding a bit like the old canard that says, "The weatherman said it was going to rain today, but it didn't, so the theory of AGW is a hoax!"

Please tell me I'm missing something.

Even long term predictions for precise locations can be very difficult. As Jim pointed out, the over-all prediction for the SW under GW is that it will further dry out. That's what's happening. So what's the problem (besides that it means pretty much everyone there is going to have to move or die!).

And yes, of course the Hot Blob or RRR or whatever is a huger wrench in the system. It was not predicted so it wasn't put into predictions of other things.

Again, complaining about people pointing to it as a partial explanation for irregularities in these cycles sounds a lot like denialists that whine about people pointing to irregularities in the jet stream to account for cold outbreaks and snows into the far south. I don't take you for a denialist, so perhaps again you could tell me what I'm missing.



"A force de chercher de bonnes raisons, on en trouve; on les dit; et après on y tient, non pas tant parce qu'elles sont bonnes que pour ne pas se démentir." Choderlos de Laclos "You struggle to come up with some valid reasons, then cling to them, not because they're good, but just to not back down."

sedziobs

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #201 on: February 04, 2016, 10:48:00 PM »
Your rant is sounding a bit like the old canard that says, "The weatherman said it was going to rain today, but it didn't, so the theory of AGW is a hoax!"
Please tell me I'm missing something.

I believe A-Team is satirizing the response of the uninitiated to a blown forecast.  He is cautioning that publicizing (and indeed acting upon) low-confidence forecasts is likely to instill doubt about more rigorous high-confidence climate projections.  Your statement in quotes is not what A-Team thinks, it's what he is worried about.  And he is saying that some well-intending people in positions of leadership are perhaps not considering the potential consequences of their words and actions.

At least that is my interpretation of A-Team's comments.   

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #202 on: February 05, 2016, 02:34:29 AM »
Your rant is sounding a bit like the old canard that says, "The weatherman said it was going to rain today, but it didn't, so the theory of AGW is a hoax!"
Please tell me I'm missing something.

I believe A-Team is satirizing the response of the uninitiated to a blown forecast.  He is cautioning that publicizing (and indeed acting upon) low-confidence forecasts is likely to instill doubt about more rigorous high-confidence climate projections.  Your statement in quotes is not what A-Team thinks, it's what he is worried about.  And he is saying that some well-intending people in positions of leadership are perhaps not considering the potential consequences of their words and actions.

At least that is my interpretation of A-Team's comments.

If your interpretation is correct, then the disruption caused by taking early action would need to be worse than the mitigation delay sensitivity (MDS) consequences cited in the linked (open access) reference, in order to be truly counterproductive.  Is it really a good idea to preserve one's ego (or good reputation) at the expense of future generations paying a consequence bill many times higher than the consequence we are already seeing today?  That said, I have no problem with pointing out excessive reporting by the press (or meteorologists, or other quasi-authoritarian figures).


Patrik L Pfister and Thomas F Stocker (21 January 2016), "Earth system commitments due to delayed mitigation", Environ. Res. Lett. 11 (2016) 014010, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/014010


http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/1/014010/pdf

Abstract: "As long as global CO2 emissions continue to increase annually, long-term committed Earth system changes grow much faster than current observations. A novel metric linking this future growth to policy decisions today is the mitigation delay sensitivity (MDS), but MDS estimates for Earth system variables other than peak temperature (ΔTmax) are missing. Using an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity, we show that the current emission increase rate causes a ΔTmax increase roughly 3–7.5 times as fast as observed warming, and a millenial steric sea level rise (SSLR) 7–25 times as fast as observed SSLR, depending on the achievable rate of emission reductions after the peak of emissions. These ranges are only slightly affected by the uncertainty range in equilibrium climate sensitivity, which is included in the above values. The extent of ocean acidification at the end of the century is also strongly dependent on the starting time and rate of emission reductions. The preservable surface ocean area with sufficient aragonite supersaturation for coral reef growth is diminished globally at an MDS of roughly 25%–80% per decade. A near-complete loss of this area becomes unavoidable if mitigation is delayed for a few years to decades. Also with respect to aragonite, 12%–18% of the Southern Ocean surface become undersaturated per decade, if emission reductions are delayed beyond 2015–2040.Weconclude that the consequences of delaying global emission reductions are much better captured if the MDS of relevant Earth system variables is communicated in addition to current trends and total projected future changes."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #203 on: February 05, 2016, 02:38:59 AM »
Per the attached image issued today by the BoM, the 30-day moving average SOI has continued moving up to -15.5:
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #204 on: February 05, 2016, 05:02:49 AM »
As for ASLRs earlier comment about starting to act in the -80's, connecting with Tor post about drought in the southwest and earlier comments. Here's what Manabe said back then. The clip is at the end.

Personally I started to listen in the early -90's and then rolled on for another decade with a positive attitude. In the early naughties I started to get annoyed. Now it's 2016 and we still do not see an effort worth mentioning.

I wonder what Syukuro Manabe is thinking nowadays, considering the papers he wrote in the -60's.

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #205 on: February 05, 2016, 05:55:31 AM »
The forums here have been well balanced and informative. By mid-March though, we may need to replace the aftermath forum with an undermath forum, lessons learned from failure and all that.
You can call this thread whatever you want. Personally I might even call it the 2014/15/16 AGW-induced El Nino and it's aftermath, since I'm not only looking at USA's classifications. And this is the aftermath of it, no matter how it plays out. But if you wish, delete that last part as well.
Quote
Edit: I should have made clear to folks overseas that this is not about our backyards being dry. It is about the Pacific Ocean weather systems that furnish most of the water to North America. And -- with the still-mysterious RRR forming up five years in a row -- this is not about some butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil.
As a European, I do feel there's a slight imbalance in the threads of this forum at times. There's a whole world out there, it's more like the US of the World. Some Americans in here are very good at keeping a broader perspective though.
Weather is chaos. That's why every supercomputer built so far has been more or less obsolete from start. Now we're waiting for this:
http://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2015/escape-project-set-prepare-new-era-supercomputing and when that one becomes operational it will be insufficent as well.
Quote
It is about older weather statistics deteriorating rapidly in predictive value, models that rely on them and associated paradigms too much, the consequent breakdown in forecasting ability that comes with rapid climate change, and the meteorologists who can't admit to any of it.
Yes, it has been noted several times in these threads that the dynamic models have had better skill than the statistically corrected ones.
As for meteorologists, there are a number of good ones out there, not all of them blindly follow the operational and corrected model outputs.

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #206 on: February 05, 2016, 09:41:46 AM »
The Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) for the last 3-month period (November-December-January average) came in at  +2.31°C, exceeding the maximum ONI value of the 1997-1998 El Nino event by about 0.05°C:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/oni.ascii.txt
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

Well, I guess that from NOAA's point of view this makes our current El Nino the "King of the Super El Ninos", or possibly the "King of the Monsters" aka Godzilla.  However, from my point of view to be a Godzilla event the peak ONI would need to be above 2.5.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2016, 04:32:27 PM by AbruptSLR »
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Buddy

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #207 on: February 05, 2016, 01:41:51 PM »
Quote
Well, I guess that from NOAA's point of view this makes our current El Nino the "King of the Super El Ninos", or possibly the "King of Monsters" aka Godzilla.

It will be interesting to see how high this will push surface temperatures in the atmosphere over the coming year.  Could be substantial...
FOX (RT) News....."The Trump Channel.....where truth and journalism are dead."

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #208 on: February 05, 2016, 04:35:51 PM »
Quote
Well, I guess that from NOAA's point of view this makes our current El Nino the "King of the Super El Ninos", or possibly the "King of Monsters" aka Godzilla.

It will be interesting to see how high this will push surface temperatures in the atmosphere over the coming year.  Could be substantial...

The attached UK Met Office projection considers Earth System states (like the ENSO phase, etc.) to make more accurate decadal-level projections than the AR5 projections, and it shows a marked increase in the rate of global mean surface temperature rise from 2016 to 2020 (blue shaded area) as compared to the AR5 forecasts (green shaded area):
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

JimD

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #209 on: February 05, 2016, 04:36:47 PM »
Quote
most people are only interested in what affects them specifically ... in Prescott AZ

.........
AZ is in fact having an exceedingly dry winter (if by AZ you include Phoenix and Tucson). The main topic of conversation around here is the rain we had back in October (neither monsoonal nor nino). And we're looking at another ten days with no change, mid February temperatures in the low 80's (28.3ºC) to evaporate whatever soil moisture might still be around.

I would echo JimD on the the mickeymouse around 'average' rainfall. Same story in Tucson ... look at those older numbers, scratch your head, watch the cactus turn yellow and the CA joshua trees fall over, wonder how the old-timers ranched creosote bush, and imagine how things would look like if we ever saw average rain years again.........


Edit: I should have made clear to folks overseas that this is not about our backyards being dry. It is about the Pacific Ocean weather systems that furnish most of the water to North America. And -- with the still-mysterious RRR forming up five years in a row -- this is not about some butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil.

It is about older weather statistics deteriorating rapidly in predictive value, models that rely on them and associated paradigms too much, the consequent breakdown in forecasting ability that comes with rapid climate change, and the meteorologists who can't admit to any of it.

Funny you should quote it that way.  Since.....

I agree pretty much with your post but the point about this being an exceedingly dry winter for AZ is not accurate for the state as a whole.  Remember that Phoenix/Tuscon/Yuma are in the south of the state and though perceptions in the cities are that they are all there is to AZ that is far from accurate.    The mid and north of the state have seen significant precipitation.  Snowpack in the high country is mostly running from 110-150% of normal.  While Dec was pretty dry in the south, Jan was not as you can see from the 2nd link Tuscon and Phoenix overall received pretty much normal precip for the month.  Feb is all TBD still but the mid and north of the state got big snowfalls already this month.

http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/31139732/el-nino-hitting-hard-to-our-north

http://rainlog.org/usprn/html/main/maps.jsp

http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/tucson/arizona/united-states/usaz0247

http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate.php?location=USAZ0166

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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #210 on: February 05, 2016, 04:58:33 PM »
As Sleepy would like more international discussion in this thread, and many people do not look in the "But, but India" thread, I repost the first attached image from that thread that shows that the Indian monsoons tend to collapse during weak El Ninos, and per the second attached NOAA corrected Nino 3.4 forecast issued February 5, 2016, there is a reasonable chance of a weak to moderate El Nino in the second half of 2016 (which might, or might not, extend into the beginning of 2017).  If such a scenario were to occur the suffering in both India and Bangladesh would be severe:


https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/enso-and-indian-monsoon%E2%80%A6-not-straightforward-you%E2%80%99d-think

Caption for the first attached image: "Comparison of the Oceanic Niño Index to Indian monsoon rainfall from 1950-2012. La Niña years are blue, neutral years are gray, and El Niño years are red. El Niño years tend to be drier than average, but the strongest El Niño of the century (1997-98) produced a monsoon season with above-average rainfall. Graph adapted from Kumar et al. 2006."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #211 on: February 05, 2016, 08:22:17 PM »
While the contribution of the current El Nino to the GMST is discussed extensively in the "Global Surface Air Temperatures" thread, I provide the following link that indicates that about 8-10% of the GISTEMP for 2015, and about 25% of the GISTEMP for 2016, was/will-be due to the current El Nino:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-el-nino-boost-2015-temp.html

Extract: "A quick comparison of either Schmidt or Cropper’s numbers with NASA’s temperature anomaly for 2015 of 0.87C above the 1951-1980 average suggests El Niño contributed about 8-10%.

That percentage will change, however, depending on the choice of historical baseline. Using a more recent baseline of 1980-2010 makes the El Niño contribution to 2015’s global temperature appear larger – around 16%. Compared to a period indicative of preindustrial times (1880-1900), however, the contribution from El Niño contribution comes out lower – around 6%.

...

As Scaife told Carbon Brief last week, the boost to global temperature in 2016 is likely to be more in the region of 25%. He explains further today:


The forecast for next year is about 0.8C above the 1961-1990 baseline. About 0.2 of that is likely to come from El Niño, hence the 25%.

There’s no doubt the El Niño that developed in 2015, which is still underway, has been abnormally strong, exceptional even. But with a contribution somewhere around the 10% mark, it seems clear from scientists that El Niño can’t be blamed for 2015’s record warmth. In fact, its contribution was strikingly small."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #212 on: February 05, 2016, 08:31:41 PM »
The linked open access reference indicates that the US Southwest may have already been pushed into a long-term drought cycle due to climate change, that is only partially disrupted by the current El Nino
Andreas F. Prein, Gregory J. Holland, Roy M. Rasmussen, Martyn P. Clark & Mari R. Tye (2016), "Running dry: The U.S. Southwest's drift into a drier climate state", Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2015GL066727


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL066727/abstract?campaign=wlytk-41855.5282060185

Abstract: "Changes in precipitation have far-reaching consequences on human society and ecosystems as has been demonstrated by recent severe droughts in California and the Oklahoma region. Droughts are beside tropical cyclones the most costly weather and climate related extreme events in the U.S. We apply a weather type (WT) analysis to reanalysis data from 1979–2014 that characterize typical weather conditions over the contiguous United States. This enables us to assign precipitation trends within 1980–2010 to changes in WT frequencies and changes in precipitation intensities. We show that in the North Atlantic and Midwest region precipitation intensity changes are the major driver of increasing precipitation trends. In the U.S. Southwest, however, WT frequency changes lead to a significant precipitation decrease of up to −25% related to an increase in anticyclonic conditions in the North East Pacific. This trend is partly counteracted by increasing precipitation intensities."

See also:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/southwest-drier-climate-change-19990
Extract: "The Southwest is already the most arid part of the U.S. Now new research indicates it’s becoming even more dry as wet weather patterns, quite literally, dry up.
The change could herald a pattern shift and raises the specter of megadrought in the region.
“We see a very intense trend in the Southwest,” Andreas Prein, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said. “The Southwest might already have drifted into a drier climate state.”"
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #213 on: February 05, 2016, 10:53:09 PM »
The first images & associated Extract for Feb 5 2016 indicates that the MEI increased slightly & is staying in third place:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

Extract: "In the context of strong El Niño conditions since March-April 2015, this section features a comparison figure with the classic set of strong El Niño events during the MEI period of record.

Compared to last month, the updated (December-January) MEI has increased slightly (by 0.08) to +2.20, continuing at the 3rd highest  ranking, and 0.3 to 0.5 sigma behind 1998 and 1983, respectively, for this season. The August-September 2015 value of +2.53 remains the third highest overall at any time of year since 1950. The evolution of the 2015-16 El Niño remains very similar to 1997, as monitored by the MEI, including a first peak in August-September and subsequent weakening during the remainder of the calendar year. In 1998, this was followed by a second peak in late boreal winter 0.2-0.3 sigma higher than in December-January.

Looking at the nearest 6 rankings (+2/-4) in this season gives us four 'analogues' already identified three months ago: 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83, and 1997-98, plus 1957-58 and 1991-92. Two of these six analogues evolved into La Niña events one year later (1973-74 and '98-99), two of them ended up neutral ('83-84 and '65-66), and two hung onto weak El Niño conditions ('58-59 and '92-93)."

The second image show NOAA's Eq Pac Subsurface Temp Anom for Jan 28 2016, showing the Pacific Ocean is still in an El Nino pattern.

The third image shows the ECMF MJO forecast from Feb 5 to 19 2016, indicating that for the next couple of weeks the MJO will be mildly disruptive to El Nino conditions; while after that period the MJO might (or might not) become constructive for El Nino conditions.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2016, 11:02:37 PM by AbruptSLR »
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Steven

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #214 on: February 05, 2016, 11:02:34 PM »
The Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) for the last 3-month period (November-December-January average) came in at  +2.31°C, exceeding the maximum ONI value of the 1997-1998 El Nino event by about 0.05°C:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/oni.ascii.txt
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

Well, I guess that from NOAA's point of view this makes our current El Nino the "King of the Super El Ninos", or possibly the "King of Monsters" aka Godzilla.

0.05°C is a small difference, so I would guess that the 2015 and 1997 El Nino events can be considered to be practically tied in terms of their maximum ONI values.

Moreover, it looks like the current ONI values are not corrected for the long-term warming trend between e.g. 1997 and 2015.  So they are not properly detrended.

The ONI website says the following about detrending:


Quote
There will be multiple centered 30-year base periods that will be used to define the Oceanic Niño index (as a departure from average or "anomaly"). These 30-year base periods will be used to calculate the anomalies for successive 5-year periods in the historical record

So, ONI values during 1950-1955 will be based on the 1936-1965 base period, ONI values during 1956-1960 will be based on the 1941-1970 base period, and so on and so forth.

In real-time operations, the past 30-year base period (e.g. 1981-2010) will continue to be used to compute the departure from average. However, CPC will create an additional 30-year base period every 5 years instead of every 10 years (the next update will be at the beginning of 2016). When these 5 year updates occur, the ONI values over the most recent decade will change slightly because of the inclusion of more recent data.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_change.shtml


So it looks like the ONI values for the last 10 to 15 years are somewhat provisory, and will be revised a few times in the future when the baseline is updated.  If I understand correctly, the following baselines are currently used for the ONI values for the super El Nino years 1982, 1997 and 2015 respectively:

1982 values:  centered baseline 1966-1995
1997 values:  centered baseline 1981-2010
2015 values:  provisory baseline 1981-2010 (to be replaced in the future by baseline 1996-2025)

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #215 on: February 05, 2016, 11:08:11 PM »
Moreover, it looks like the current ONI values are not corrected for the long-term warming trend between e.g. 1997 and 2015.  So they are not properly detrended.

If one is trying to understand the oscillatory behavior of the ENSO then detrending is important.  However, if one is concerned with the contribution of the Equatorial Pacific to ECS (via deep atmospheric convention) then it is better not to detrend.  It all depend on what you are concerned about.
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #216 on: February 05, 2016, 11:20:33 PM »
You can compare the attached TAO image of the Eq Pacific Subsurface Temp Anom for Feb 5 2016; with that shown in Reply #169 for Jan 29 2016.  This comparison indicates that the downwelling phase of the EKW has moved eastward which is allowing cooler deep water from follow along behind it.
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #217 on: February 06, 2016, 02:38:21 AM »
Per the attached plot issued today by the BoM, the 30-day moving average SOI has continued moving up to -15.0:
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #218 on: February 06, 2016, 05:58:14 AM »
When looking at NOAA's weekly SST data, it's now over a year ago since they reported negative anomalies for the Nino4 region. And the last time it was at -0.5° (or lower) was in April 4:th, 2013.

Now there's only five individual runs below 0° in the attached Nino4 forecast from CFSv2, the trend has been that the demize of this event has been pushed forwards and it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year.

It will be really interesting to see the plumes from ECMWF for February.

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #219 on: February 06, 2016, 06:28:38 AM »
Reconnecting to ASLRs Reply #210 and my own previous Reply #205.
More people will probably die from this event, as it is, than the entire Californian population.

And if we were to see a follow up to this event like in the early 90's, (Reply #136) it would be truly awful.
Let us hope, we do not.

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #220 on: February 07, 2016, 02:38:49 AM »
Per the attached plot issued today by the BoM, the 30-day moving average SOI has continued moving up to -14.0:
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #221 on: February 07, 2016, 12:04:32 PM »
Quote
#212 notes an article to the effect the US Southwest has already been pushed into a long-term drought cycle that is 'only partially disrupted by the current El Nino'.
This article is an easy read and recommended, a refreshing change from the daily drivel attributing every sneeze in Seattle to El Nino. They classify 35 years of reanalysis using PCA and k-means into 12 weather types to separate precipitation trends due to changes in the frequency of weather types out from changes in precipitation intensity.

Running dry: The U.S. Southwest's drift into a drier climate state
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL066727/full free full text )

Quote
The annual WT frequencies are not correlated with large-scale climate indices such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation or the North Atlantic Oscillation Index (correlation coefficients are typically below ±0.3 and insignificant). The highest correlation coefficients are found for detrended time series of the Arctic Oscillation Index and WT3 and WT4 frequencies. The correlation coefficients between the frequencies of WTs with significant decreasing trends  with ERA-Interim SST are typically low indicating that their decrease is not related to SST variability.
El Nino meteorologists haven't just "missed a one-off local forecast," they've missed the whole Pacific Ocean for the NH. It's evident that no one can demonstrate even a first-order grip on tele-effects. No doubt they're there and consequential in some areas in some years but -- despite the non-stop claims -- they have not been shown to be a significant consideration for NA in 2016. So did this get to be textbook level received wisdom?

I wonder how much of this is attributable to 'nature deficit disorder', too much time at the terminal, not enough sticking heads outside. I saw this coming in early December, how was this possible. We run triplicate calibrated rain gauges on our property. Out to March 1st, I would say it's way drier than average over a huge swath of the Southwest, even if you let your average be dominated by the last 15 years of drought (the new way of covering up climate change).

My challenge remains open: I give you 30 years of double-blinded NH data, you tell me which years were El Ninos and how strong. Most of these 2016 El Nino attributions in NA are pure bunkum, fully attributable to psychological suggestion. It's the same with La Nina, every sunny day was only to be expected.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2016, 12:42:16 PM by A-Team »

LRC1962

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #222 on: February 07, 2016, 03:10:01 PM »
A-Team: I believe it was something quite simple.  They opened up their historical understanding of what happens during an El Nino year. Plugged in the numbers for their prediction of the strength of the ENSO. Then said this is what will happen.
The hot blob off Alaska was completely ignored or for some reason thought it was going to completely over whelmed by the ENSO. The cold blob off Greenland did not even hit the radar and the the slowing down of the jet stream resulting the the TTT-RRR effects of the last few years for some reason also was ignored.
Just because you have a perceived understanding of a climatic event, you must still include in you understanding what is happening globally.
 Oceans are heating up, the ASI is disappearing, the Gulf stream is slowing down and changing its path, the NH jet stream is increasing its waviness and slowing down because the temperature differences between equator and pole is getting smaller. All these factors must redefine what is normal. Until that happens. Weather forcastors are going to look worse and worse.
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #223 on: February 07, 2016, 05:21:16 PM »
I provide the following ENSO information from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, UCAR, & the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR:

https://www2.ucar.edu/news/backgrounders/el-nino-la-nina-enso

Extract: "The maps at right {first image} show the most common teleconnections associated with El Niño and La Niña during northern summer and winter. Not every warm- or cool-water event will produce all of these impacts, because other atmospheric features interact with each ENSO event to influence weather and climate around the globe. Weaker events, in particular, may look quite different from the prototypes shown here. El Niño Modoki events (where the warming is concentrated further to the west than usual) show significant differences in teleconnections from other El Niño events.

In the United States, a strong El Niño event tends to produce milder- and drier-than-average conditions toward the north and cooler- and wetter-than-average conditions to the south. In California, a strong El Niño very often brings more moisture than usual. However, during the weakest El Niño events, San Francisco and Los Angeles are a bit more likely to be unusually dry than unusually wet. (Meteorologist Jan Null maintains a compilation of additional El Niño “myths and realities.”)

Do El Niño and La Niña influence global temperature?

During El Niño, a deep pool of warm water usually restricted to the western tropical Pacific is replaced by a much larger, more shallow pool of warm water that covers most or all of the tropical Pacific. The expanded zone of warm sea surface temperatures allows more heat to be conveyed from the ocean into the atmosphere for months at a time. As a result, globally averaged temperatures often rise by a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit during the latter stages of a strong El Niño event. Conversely, global temperatures can drop by a similar amount during a La Niña event.

NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth has likened El Niño to a “pressure valve” that releases built-up heat from the oceans into the atmosphere. The oceans cool during El Niño events, while the global atmosphere warms.

Scientists often account for ENSO by factoring out these bumps and dips in global temperature when analyzing the long-term trends related to climate change. For example, the first 15 years of this century saw more La Niña than El Niño influence, and global air temperatures showed little rise. Prior to that period, in the 1980s and 1990s, when El Niño events were more frequent, global temperatures rose more sharply.

The map at right {second image} shows year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature (in red), the long-term trend of rising global temperature (in black), and the starts and stops of all ENSO events (shaded vertical bars). Note that other factors also influence global temperature, such as the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. The volcano threw enough sun-blocking material into the atmosphere to cause a drop in global temperatures during 1992, despite the presence of El Niño.
Shifts in global temperature, as well as in the likelihood of ENSO events, are closely associated with the state of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), a pattern of ocean temperatures that reverses every 20-30 years. More La Niña events tend to be observed when the PDO is negative, and more El Niño events when it is positive. Scientists are not yet sure what prompts the PDO to shift modes."


Caption for first image: "These maps show the most commonly experienced impacts related to El Niño (“warm episode,” top) and La Niña (“cold episode,” bottom) during the period December to February, when both phenomena tend to be at their strongest. (El Niño and La Niña images courtesy NWS/NCEP Climate Prediction Center.)"

Caption for second image: "The red line above shows surface temperatures (over land and ocean), in a running 12-month average, as calculated by NOAA. The vertical, shaded bars indicate El Niño (buff) and La Niña (sky blue) periods, based on Niño3.4 SST (sea surface temperature) anomalies. These anomalies appear in red (warm) and blue (cool) in the lower panel. (Figure 6, “An apparent hiatus in global warming?” Kevin E. Trenberth and John T. Fasullo, Earth’s Future, 2013.)"
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #224 on: February 07, 2016, 05:34:11 PM »
While the ENSO cycle is a textbook example of a chaotic system, the linked article offers another attempt to explain global connections.  I separately note that the next generation of climate models should be better at identifying the interactions of the ENSO and climate change:

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/02/02/el-nino-and-global-warming-whats-the-connection/

Extract: "“We have to think climate change will influence El Niño in some way and will impact its impacts,” said Goddard. “But how El Niño events themselves change because of global warming? It’s hard to say, and harder to observe because there is so much variation in El Niño by itself from decade to decade. It’s a tough question to answer.”
Scientists are working on it, however. One of the World Climate Research Programme’s CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change) projects is bringing together scientists from around the world to study “ENSO in a Changing Climate.”  CLIVAR says that it has not been possible to determine how ENSO will be affected by changes in coming decades because there has not been long and comprehensive enough observation of ENSO phenomena, and because the ability of computers to model the complex interplay of the many ocean and atmospheric processes involved in ENSO is limited. The project’s goal is to better understand how different physical processes influence ENSO and the variability of El Niño events over decades.
This research is critical, because future El Niño events will unfold against the background of global warming. Michael Jarraud, former secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, warned that El Niño could be “playing out in uncharted territory.” “This naturally occurring El Niño event and human induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways we have never before experienced,” said Jarraud."

See also:
http://www.clivar.org/research-foci/enso
« Last Edit: February 07, 2016, 05:39:23 PM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #225 on: February 07, 2016, 10:40:00 PM »
When looking at NOAA's weekly SST data, it's now over a year ago since they reported negative anomalies for the Nino4 region. And the last time it was at -0.5° (or lower) was in April 4:th, 2013.

Now there's only five individual runs below 0° in the attached Nino4 forecast from CFSv2, the trend has been that the demize of this event has been pushed forwards and it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year.

It will be really interesting to see the plumes from ECMWF for February.

Given that the world as a whole has warmed, isn't an average of 0.5 indicative of just a shift in the mean,  and not an excess buildup of heat in only 1 specific area? 


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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #226 on: February 07, 2016, 11:11:37 PM »
According to most authorities the rate of increase of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is slowing down; however, per the attached Mauna Loa plot the most recent three days in February 2016 atmospheric concentrations have been about 4.35ppm above the same time last year.  Is it possible/probable that the combination of both global warming and a Super El Nino is triggering positive CO2 emission feedbacks?

Edit: The second attached image provides the associated numbers:
« Last Edit: February 08, 2016, 11:44:01 AM by AbruptSLR »
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #227 on: February 08, 2016, 02:23:25 AM »
Per the attached plot issued today by the BoM, the 30-day moving average SOI has continued moving up to -13.1:
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #228 on: February 08, 2016, 02:54:54 AM »
Looks like the eastern pacific is quickly turning in direction of La Nina


@AbruptSLR: Pretty negligible as a feedback, but yes, El Nino reduces the absorption of CO2 into the ocean temporarily.

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #229 on: February 08, 2016, 08:19:31 AM »
Plinius: i'm not so sure about that. Sure, the easterlies will dominate this week but the MJO is moving to the western Pacific, which virtually all models agree about, and in about 10 days or so a new WWB should emerge. By the same time, the easterlies are foreseen to weaken, especially by week 3-4 according to NOAA CFSv2: http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/mchen/CFSv2FCST/weekly/

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #230 on: February 08, 2016, 12:00:14 PM »
When looking at NOAA's weekly SST data, it's now over a year ago since they reported negative anomalies for the Nino4 region. And the last time it was at -0.5° (or lower) was in April 4:th, 2013.

Now there's only five individual runs below 0° in the attached Nino4 forecast from CFSv2, the trend has been that the demize of this event has been pushed forwards and it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year.

It will be really interesting to see the plumes from ECMWF for February.

Given that the world as a whole has warmed, isn't an average of 0.5 indicative of just a shift in the mean,  and not an excess buildup of heat in only 1 specific area?

Ocean surface temperature trend rates over 1979 to 2012 per IPCC AR5:
0.072 ± 0.024 °C per decade per HadISST to 0.124 ± 0.030 °C per decade per HadSST3

Even taking fastest rate, tropical ocean regions will be warming more slowly, so .5°C is certainly well over 40 years of trend warming and can not be considered to be caused by warmer world; it is almost entirely ENSO noise about the trend.

As to "it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year"

CFS is only one model though we do have different initial condition ensemble. Worth seeing how other models see it?

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #231 on: February 08, 2016, 12:14:00 PM »
The first three images were issued today by the BoM through the week ending Feb 7 2016.  The first image shows that the Nino 3.4 has remained nearly constant at +2.09.  The second shows that the IOD remains neutral, and the third shows the Eq Pac Dateline cloud cover increasing.

The fourth image shows the TAO Eq Pac Subsurface Temp Anom for Feb 7 2016, showing that the Pacific Ocean remains in an El Nino pattern.
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #232 on: February 08, 2016, 12:17:44 PM »
The four attached plots where issued today by the BoM through the week ending Feb 7 2016, & show the Nino 1, 2, 3 & 4 indices, respectively.  The Nino 1, 2 & 4 indices are up slightly, while the Nino 3 index is effectively unchanged.
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #233 on: February 08, 2016, 02:34:09 PM »
When looking at NOAA's weekly SST data, it's now over a year ago since they reported negative anomalies for the Nino4 region. And the last time it was at -0.5° (or lower) was in April 4:th, 2013.

Now there's only five individual runs below 0° in the attached Nino4 forecast from CFSv2, the trend has been that the demize of this event has been pushed forwards and it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year.

It will be really interesting to see the plumes from ECMWF for February.

Given that the world as a whole has warmed, isn't an average of 0.5 indicative of just a shift in the mean,  and not an excess buildup of heat in only 1 specific area?

Ocean surface temperature trend rates over 1979 to 2012 per IPCC AR5:
0.072 ± 0.024 °C per decade per HadISST to 0.124 ± 0.030 °C per decade per HadSST3

Even taking fastest rate, tropical ocean regions will be warming more slowly, so .5°C is certainly well over 40 years of trend warming and can not be considered to be caused by warmer world; it is almost entirely ENSO noise about the trend.

As to "it's becoming more and more likely that we will not have a La Nina at all this year"

CFS is only one model though we do have different initial condition ensemble. Worth seeing how other models see it?


That picture was posted 21:th of January by IRI and are for the Nino34 region. Not Nino4.
A quote from NOAA:
Quote
SST values in the Niño 3.4 region may not be the best choice for determining La Niña episodes but, for consistency, the index has been defined by negative anomalies in this area. A better choice might be the Niño 4 region, since that region normally has SSTs at or above the threshold for deep convection throughout the year. An SST anomaly of -0.5°C in that region would be sufficient to bring water temperatures below the 28°C threshold, which would result in a significant westward shift in the pattern of deep convection in the tropical Pacific.
Time series attached for the Nino4 region.
Also attached is the anomalous depth of the equatorial Pacific thermocline (Nino34) from here:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/ENSO/Time_Series/Heat_Storage_West_Pac.html

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #234 on: February 08, 2016, 04:21:13 PM »
Per the linked article, Zimbabwe just declared an El Nino related drought-driven state of disaster:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a494195cb2994e11893223a617810691/drought-stricken-zimbabwe-declares-state-disaster

Extract: "Underscoring the severity of the drought linked to the El Nino weather pattern hitting much of southern Africa, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe declared a state of disaster Thursday, with the hope of speeding up the flow of aid to needy communities.

The drought has devastated crops. The situation is especially acute in Zimbabwe, where a declining economy and rising unemployment have made life hard for many people in a country once known as a regional breadbasket."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #235 on: February 08, 2016, 04:34:10 PM »
Per the following NOAA data, for the week centered on Feb 3 2016, the Nino 3.4 index has moved back up to +2.6 (representing a shoulder):
 
                    Nino1+2      Nino3         Nino34        Nino4
 Week           SST SSTA    SST SSTA   SST SSTA    SST SSTA
 18NOV2015     23.8 2.1     28.0 3.0     29.7 3.1     30.4 1.8
 25NOV2015     24.4 2.4     28.0 3.0     29.6 3.0     30.3 1.8
 02DEC2015     24.7 2.4     27.9 2.9     29.5 2.9     30.2 1.7
 09DEC2015     24.8 2.3     28.0 2.9     29.4 2.8     30.2 1.7
 16DEC2015     25.2 2.4     28.0 2.9     29.5 2.9     30.2 1.7
 23DEC2015     25.2 2.1     28.0 2.7     29.3 2.7     30.0 1.6
 30DEC2015     25.2 1.6     28.0 2.6     29.3 2.7     29.9 1.5
 06JAN2016     25.7 1.8     28.1 2.7     29.1 2.6     29.7 1.4
 13JAN2016     25.7 1.4     28.3 2.8     29.2 2.6     29.6 1.3
 20JAN2016     26.0 1.4     28.2 2.5     29.1 2.5     29.6 1.4
 27JAN2016     26.1 1.0     28.2 2.3     29.1 2.5     29.7 1.5
 03FEB2016     26.6 1.2     28.3 2.2     29.3 2.6     29.6 1.5

Also, the three attached images were all issued by NOAA on Feb 8 2016.  The first shows that the Eq Pac Upper Ocean Heat Anom remains relatively stable, the second shows that the Eq Pac SSTA Evolution is relatively stable, and the third shows that the per the Eq Pac Upper Ocean Heat Anom Evolution that the downwelling phase of the EKW is still moving eastward (and should continue to increase the values of the Nino 1 & 2 indices):
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AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #236 on: February 08, 2016, 04:40:01 PM »
The first attached image shows NOAA's NCPE MJO forecast from Feb 8 to 22 2016; which is rather bullish for supporting future El Nino reinforcement in about two weeks time.

The second image shows the ECMF MJO forecast for the same period; which is markedly less bullish.
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #237 on: February 08, 2016, 08:37:13 PM »
The image below was tweeted today by Michael Ventrice.  It compares the sea surface temperature anomaly forecasts for July 2016 from several different models.  Most models seem to indicate a transition to La Nina-like conditions.

https://twitter.com/MJVentrice/status/696734426705850368




(click on image to enlarge)

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #238 on: February 08, 2016, 08:50:47 PM »
There is also an interesting recent blog post by Anthony Barnston (dated 28 January 2016, but I think it hasn't been posted yet in this thread):

Will La Niña follow El Niño? What the past tells us


Quote
...

Aside from doing this number crunching on the historical observations, there are accepted physical reasons for expecting a tendency toward La Niña the year after a significant El Niño. One of these is the delayed oscillator theory, introduced in 1988 by Suarez and Schopf.

The theory says that the low-level westerly wind anomalies, a hallmark of El Niño, not only trigger eastward-moving oceanic Kelvin waves at the equator (see Michelle’s blog), but also westward-moving waves just north and south of the equator (called Rossby waves). While Kelvin waves are pushing warm water east, these Rossby waves move cooler subsurface water toward the west. They then bounce off the western side of the tropical Pacific (around Indonesia) and have a return trip, traveling eastward near the equator.

On their eastward trip, these waves also promote cooler water, and can neutralize or reverse El Niño around 6 months after the westerly wind bursts. This cool pulse interrupts the positive feedback mechanism responsible for the growth of an El Niño, ending El Niño and promoting La Niña development.

Since stronger El Niño events often involve stronger westerly wind anomalies, these events tend to trigger stronger Rossby waves and stronger tendencies for El Niño to decay and possibly reverse after peaking at the end of a calendar year.

Based on the statistics derived from the historical data and on the more physical basis as described by delayed oscillator theory, the CPC/IRI team is expecting some cooling coming up in 2016-17. So, stay tuned to upcoming ENSO outlooks

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #239 on: February 09, 2016, 01:33:51 AM »
The image below was tweeted today by Michael Ventrice.  It compares the sea surface temperature anomaly forecasts for July 2016 from several different models.  Most models seem to indicate a transition to La Nina-like conditions.

As noted previously, the CFSv2 projection shows weak El Nino conditions for that period.

Edit: See the attached July 2016 CFSv2 SSTA forecast plot
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 11:18:45 AM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #240 on: February 09, 2016, 02:25:29 AM »
The attached plot issued today by the BoM, indicates that the 30-day moving average SOI has continued moving up to -12.2:
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #241 on: February 09, 2016, 06:10:53 AM »
Maybe we should note that there are still large uncertainties in our ability to forecast ENSO. The event in 82-83 took everyone by surprise and there were exactly zero forecasts for that event.
To me there's no such thing as a consensus in model outputs, some do better and some do worse, and La Nina is not a mirror image of El Nino.

Regarding the tweet by Michael Ventrice above posted by Steven, why not look into one of those models who try to do better, NMME.
Quote
As of Aug 2015, the NMME real time Nino3.4 plume has been corrected for systematic bias in the amplitude. (Correcting for mean error continues unchanged.) The model forecast anomalies have been divided by a correction factor, equal to the ratio of the models' hindcast standard deviation to the standard deviation of the IOSST observed SST (1982-2010). The correction factor is calculated for each model, start month and lead and feeds into the multi-model ensemble. For most but not all models this procedure means a reduction in amplitude of all members, and also the ensemble mean.
Attached is the latest ensemble mean from NMME. As you can see, some do indicate a La Nina but you can also see what all of them do in August. NMME does not indicate a La Nina.

Things are changing right now. Looking at, and comparing with the past won't help us much when the base state of the oceans are changing.

If we should see a follow up as in the early nineties (as previously posted), we would need a bunch of Pinatubos to keep things cool for a few years.

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #242 on: February 09, 2016, 11:30:28 AM »
There is also an interesting recent blog post by Anthony Barnston (dated 28 January 2016, but I think it hasn't been posted yet in this thread):

Will La Niña follow El Niño? What the past tells us


While I concur with Sleepy, that in the non-stationary climatic situation that we are all in right now, looking for strict historical analogies can have its limitations; nevertheless the following extract from the Feb 5 2016 MEI report notes that when looking at only the top 6 ranked events, there is about a 33% chance of our current Super El Nino being following by a weak El Nino one year later.  Furthermore, this limited data also indicates a 33% chance of neutral conditions one year later (i.e. by the second half of 2016).


http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

Extract: "Looking at the nearest 6 rankings (+2/-4) in this season gives us four 'analogues' already identified three months ago: 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83, and 1997-98, plus 1957-58 and 1991-92. Two of these six analogues evolved into La Niña events one year later (1973-74 and '98-99), two of them ended up neutral ('83-84 and '65-66), and two hung onto weak El Niño conditions ('58-59 and '92-93)."
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #243 on: February 09, 2016, 04:21:27 PM »
While it is doubtful that the recent high Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations are due exclusively to our current Super El Nino, it seems to me that the superposition of high global warming and our current Super El Nino may well be triggering an acceleration of net carbon loss from the tropics:
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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #244 on: February 09, 2016, 04:28:14 PM »
¿Dónde está El Niño?       ...      Dijeron El Niño se acerca, pero no ha pasado nada       ...     El calor no se quiere ir

That's a timely headline ... and about time. At least the excuse list hasn't dried up yet:

-- El Nino is having the predicted effects, only these big ones don't.

-- El Nino will indeed have the predicted effects, when it winds down in April.

-- It's been influencing the atmosphere exactly the same way we've seen previously, only not.

-- Jet stream has hardly budged, though 2000 km off is enough to ruin our predictions.

-- This El Nino is not too big to fail, it's too big to succeed.

http://www.latimes.com/local/weather/la-me-winter-heat-20160209-story.html

Quote
Calendar says winter, but it's hot and dry: Has El Niño abandoned LA? By this point in the winter, Southern California was supposed to be dealing with rains and flooding, not brush fires and beach weather. Yet temperatures have soared this week, breaking records in downtown Los Angeles and other locations across California, with even hotter conditions expected Tuesday.

For all the talk of monster rains from El Niño, all but three days in the last month have been dry in the Los Angeles area.

Has El Niño abandoned L.A.? It's too early to be certain. But some scientists say El Niño is operating differently than they expected — at least for Southern California. Last fall, the consensus was that El Niño would give Southern California the best chance for above-average rains and much less of a chance to Northern California. But the opposite has turned out to be true.

Southern California is still well below average rainfall, with downtown L.A. reporting 52% of normal since Oct. 1. But deluge after deluge to the north has built back the snowpack — it's 105% of normal in the Sierra Nevada [[with another 10 dry days coming, snowpack will drop well below average]] — and begun to refill drought-depleted reservoirs [[reservoir levels haven't budged]].

For Southern California, the strong El Niño "hasn't been a great predictor so far this winter," said Stanford University climate scientist Daniel Swain, and "hasn't been influencing the atmosphere in exactly the same way that we have seen."

A massive ridge of high pressure is keeping much of California dry and warm this week. In Southern California, that brought dry winds and temperatures that approached 90. A series of big El Niño-influenced storms [[bogus attribution IMO]] the first week of January left Mt. Baldy and other winter resorts with snow. But the promised "conveyor belt" of storms has not materialized since then.

But something changed this year. With the zone of warm water in the ocean particularly large and persistent, the movement of warm air above it traveled farther north than expected. That means the parade of storms zipping across the Pacific Ocean established a path over Northern California and even the Pacific Northwest — and bypassed Southern California, Swain said.

That may be the reason why all but one storm have missed L.A. over the last month. "It may be because El Niño is so strong," Swain said. The difference in the path of the jet stream is "very slight in the global context," Swain said in an interview. "But if you're in Los Angeles, that difference means a lot." 

Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said one hypothesis is that El Niño needs to weaken before the storm track can reemerge over Southern California. In 1998, it was a weakening El Niño in January that preceded storms that pounded L.A. in February. Last month, El Niño was still extremely large and potent — about two and a half times the size of the continental United States.

In other words: "This is not too big to fail, but with regard to Southern California, it's too big to succeed," Patzert said. "I'm still saying: Be patient. In terms of getting Southern California their El Niño fix, this thing has to shrink somewhat.... So if that idea is correct, then we're looking good for March and April."

For the period from Feb. 20 to March 4, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center forecasted a better-than-even chance of above-average rains for Southern California, given the strong El Niño condition in the ocean [[though we know now that has no predictive value]].

Even though we haven't seen El Niño pan out" in sending storms to Southern California, said specialist Stuart Seto of the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, "that still doesn't mean we can't see good rains in the latter part of February and in March." [[double negatives won't bring precip]]
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 04:53:34 PM by A-Team »

plinius

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #245 on: February 09, 2016, 04:31:48 PM »
@ASLR: I would point out that oceans are globally still absorbing CO2, not emitting. You can say that El Nino slows this absorption, but it does not trigger net emission (apart from fires of course).

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #246 on: February 09, 2016, 05:36:09 PM »
@ASLR: I would point out that oceans are globally still absorbing CO2, not emitting. You can say that El Nino slows this absorption, but it does not trigger net emission (apart from fires of course).

First, I note that it is well known that the primary source of CO₂ fluctuations over the ENSO cycle is due to changes in land vegetation in the tropics (from 30N to 30S), rather than due to emissions from the ocean.  Second, the first reference (and associated image) shows that there has been a two-fold increase of carbon cycle sensitivity to tropical temperature variations over the past several decades.  Third, the second reference indicates global warming is increasing the frequency of extreme El Ninos.  As strong El Ninos increase both the temperature and induce droughts in the tropics it is clear that CO₂ emissions increase from the tropical land vegetation during strong El Ninos:

Wang, X., Piao, S., Ciais, P., Friedlingstein, P., Myneni, R.B., Cox, P., Heimann, M., Miller, J., Peng, S.P., Wang, T., Yang, H. and Chen, A., (2014), "A two-fold increase of carbon cycle sensitivity to tropical temperature variations", Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature12915.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature12915.html#extended-data

http://sites.bu.edu/cliveg/files/2014/01/wang-nature-2014.pdf

Abstract: "Earth system models project that the tropical land carbon sink will decrease in size in response to an increase in warming and drought during this century, probably causing a positive climate feedback. But available data are too limited at present to test the predicted changes in the tropical carbon balance in response to climate change. Long-term atmospheric carbon dioxide data provide a global record that integrates the interannual variability of the global carbon balance. Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that most of this variability originates in the terrestrial biosphere. In particular, the year-to-year variations in the atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rate (CGR) are thought to be the result of fluctuations in the carbon fluxes of tropical land areas. Recently, the response of CGR to tropical climate interannual variability was used to put a constraint on the sensitivity of tropical land carbon to climate change. Here we use the long-term CGR record from Mauna Loa and the South Pole to show that the sensitivity of CGR to tropical temperature interannual variability has increased by a factor of 1.9 ± 0.3 in the past five decades. We find that this sensitivity was greater when tropical land regions experienced drier conditions. This suggests that the sensitivity of CGR to interannual temperature variations is regulated by moisture conditions, even though the direct correlation between CGR and tropical precipitation is weak. We also find that present terrestrial carbon cycle models do not capture the observed enhancement in CGR sensitivity in the past five decades. More realistic model predictions of future carbon cycle and climate feedbacks require a better understanding of the processes driving the response of tropical ecosystems to drought and warming."

Caption for image: " Figure 1 | Change in detrended anomalies in CGR and tropical MAT, in
dCGR/dMAT and in ªintCGR over the past five decades. a, Change in detrended CGR anomalies at Mauna Loa Observatory (black) and in detrended tropical MAT anomalies (red) derived from the CRU data set16. Tropical MAT is calculated as the spatial average over vegetated tropical lands (23uN to 23u S).  The highest correlations between detrended CGR and detrended tropicalMAT are obtained when no time lags are applied (R50.53, P,0.01). b, Change in dCGR/dMAT during the past five decades. c, Change in cintCGR during the past five decades. In b and c, different colours showdCGR/dMATor cint CGR estimated with moving time windows of different lengths (20 yr and 25 yr). Years on the horizontal axis indicate the central year of the moving time window used to derive dCGR/dMAT or cintCGR (for example, 1970 represents period 1960–1979 in the 20-yr time window). The shaded areas show the confidence interval of dCGR/dMATand cintCGR, as appropriate, derived using 20-yr or 25-yr moving windows in 500 bootstrap estimates."



Wenju Cai, Agus Santoso, Guojian Wang, Sang-Wook Yeh, Soon-Il An, Kim M. Cobb, Mat Collins, Eric Guilyardi, Fei-Fei Jin, Jong-Seong Kug, Matthieu Lengaigne, Michael J. McPhaden, Ken Takahashi, Axel Timmermann, Gabriel Vecchi, Masahiro Watanabe & Lixin Wu (2015), "ENSO and greenhouse warming", Nature Climate Change, Volume: 5, Pages: 849–859, doi:10.1038/nclimate2743


http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2743.html

Abstract: "The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant climate phenomenon affecting extreme weather conditions worldwide. Its response to greenhouse warming has challenged scientists for decades, despite model agreement on projected changes in mean state. Recent studies have provided new insights into the elusive links between changes in ENSO and in the mean state of the Pacific climate. The projected slow-down in Walker circulation is expected to weaken equatorial Pacific Ocean currents, boosting the occurrences of eastward-propagating warm surface anomalies that characterize observed extreme El Niño events. Accelerated equatorial Pacific warming, particularly in the east, is expected to induce extreme rainfall in the eastern equatorial Pacific and extreme equatorward swings of the Pacific convergence zones, both of which are features of extreme El Niño. The frequency of extreme La Niña is also expected to increase in response to more extreme El Niños, an accelerated maritime continent warming and surface-intensified ocean warming. ENSO-related catastrophic weather events are thus likely to occur more frequently with unabated greenhouse-gas emissions. But model biases and recent observed strengthening of the Walker circulation highlight the need for further testing as new models, observations and insights become available."


See also, for input from Peter Cox:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v494/n7437/full/nature11882.html

Extract: "We estimate that over tropical land from latitude 30° north to 30° south, warming alone will release 53 ± 17 gigatonnes of carbon per kelvin."
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 06:10:00 PM by AbruptSLR »
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Steven

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #247 on: February 09, 2016, 07:05:49 PM »
the following extract from the Feb 5 2016 MEI report notes that when looking at only the top 6 ranked events, there is about a 33% chance of our current Super El Nino being following by a weak El Nino one year later.  Furthermore, this limited data also indicates a 33% chance of neutral conditions one year later (i.e. by the second half of 2016).


http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

Extract: "Looking at the nearest 6 rankings (+2/-4) in this season gives us four 'analogues' already identified three months ago: 1965-66, 1972-73, 1982-83, and 1997-98, plus 1957-58 and 1991-92. Two of these six analogues evolved into La Niña events one year later (1973-74 and '98-99), two of them ended up neutral ('83-84 and '65-66), and two hung onto weak El Niño conditions ('58-59 and '92-93)."

That is a poor way to calculate probabilities.  Why are only the top 6 ranked events used (rather than, say, the top 4 or top 12 events)?  Moreover, some of those "one-year-later" events were borderline cases, whose classification depends on the precise dataset and definition that is used.  E.g. if one uses the ONI (rather than MEI) data for the 6 events mentioned above, then
  • 1998-99 was a moderate La Nina
  • 1973-74 was a strong La Nina
  • 1983-84 and 1966-67 are near the borderline between ENSO-neutral and weak La Nina
  • 1992-93 and 1958-59 are near the borderline between ENSO-neutral and weak El Nino


http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm


Compare with the regression analysis in Anthony Barnston's blog post:

Quote from: A. Barnston
When looking at the results for weak, moderate, and strong El Niño separately, I find an average sea surface temperature anomaly [for the Niño3.4 region] of -0.15 °C the year after the 11 weak El Niños, -0.40 °C after the 7 moderate El Niños, and -1.17 °C for the 3 strong El Niños
...
The resulting correlation is -0.31, which translates to a very weak tendency for the sea surface temperature the following year to be colder when the El Niño the first year is stronger
...
the standard error of estimate... says that the probability of getting La Niña for 2016-17 is 66%, leaving a 34% chance for falling short of the La Niña threshold... The large uncertainty of this method is why forecasters don’t just look at the past to predict the future, but also take into account other prediction tools...
« Last Edit: February 09, 2016, 07:25:54 PM by Steven »

Steven

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #248 on: February 09, 2016, 07:23:32 PM »
Regarding the tweet by Michael Ventrice above posted by Steven, why not look into one of those models who try to do better, NMME.
Quote
As of Aug 2015, the NMME real time Nino3.4 plume has been corrected for systematic bias in the amplitude. (Correcting for mean error continues unchanged.) The model forecast anomalies have been divided by a correction factor, equal to the ratio of the models' hindcast standard deviation to the standard deviation of the IOSST observed SST (1982-2010). The correction factor is calculated for each model, start month and lead and feeds into the multi-model ensemble. For most but not all models this procedure means a reduction in amplitude of all members, and also the ensemble mean.
Attached is the latest ensemble mean from NMME. As you can see, some do indicate a La Nina but you can also see what all of them do in August. NMME does not indicate a La Nina.

The text you quoted says that the bias correction procedure usually leads to a reduction in amplitude of the forecast.  I would guess that the correction is largest near the end of the forecast period (i.e. September 2016 in this case), since the uncertainty is greatest there.  So I'm not sure if the apparent flattening of the forecast curves between July and September 2016 should be taken at face value.  Anyway, it will be interesting to compare with later updates.

AbruptSLR

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Re: 2015/16 El Niño, the aftermath
« Reply #249 on: February 09, 2016, 07:29:01 PM »
That is a poor way to calculate probabilities. 

Given that we are facing the "Spring Barrier", it is worthwhile acknowledging that all means of projecting the ENSO state in the second half of 2016 come with a high degree of uncertainty.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson